Welcome to Foster Focus Magazine’s Q and A. Let’s start our conversation with what has qualified each of you to be mental health professionals?
John DeGarmo, Ed.D. (Doctor in Education) www.drejohndegarmo.com
Gregory Manning, Psy.D. (Doctor of Psychology) in Clinical Psychology
http://www.drgregmanning.com/documents/ProfessionalBiography.pdf; http://drgregmanning.com
What motivated you to work with foster children?
Dr. DeGarmo: I was appalled at the challenges foster children face in public school. I was teaching at that time and was teaching high school English and Drama. I had foster children failing in school. I was living in Australia with my wife and moved to Georgia. What got me into fostering was a deep concern about the children in my classroom and a lot of the academic and behavioral problems and when I met the parents I realized aha this is why. My wife and I felt called and we became foster parents 12 years ago. We had a 5 and 3 year old daughters and a 2 year old son and this is all they have known.
Dr Manning: I go to the houses of these families and work with them. I want people who are passionate about taking care of my child. We want people in the field who are passionate about taking care of children. They need a caring supportive ear. The sensory experiences they have are devastating.
What concerns did you have when you got into foster care?
Dr. DeGarmo: My major concerns when started fostering was to have a foster child no older than my oldest and we have wanted to follow that rule for a number of years; and we have had 18 years olds. Gender did not matter, skin color did not matter. The three children they have adopted society will consider them African American and to us they are ours. We tell them “we all are the same color just different shades.” There are 3000 people in our town and the three children we have adopted were born in our town and we did not know who their biological fathers are. So, when someone says, that this is my cousin – we respond with “how very nice. “ Strangers come up to us when we are in the grocery store and they want to talk out of curiosity – they often ask if their children come to our house.
Dr Manning: Interdisciplinary teams are fine if they are not a window dressing. If the team is meeting about the future of the child and the kid’s luggage is in the car – that’s devastating. I cannot accept a response, “We’ve always done it this way.”
How is fostering different from adoption?
Dr. DeGarmo: In fostering the attachment is difficult. The child is suddenly taken away from you. For me it is when the children come to my home, I consider them my own, and there are the times when they are placed into an environment that is dangerous. I cope with a great deal of prayer and hope for the best. The first few nights are very difficult – the anxieties, “be very very patient with the child, either the child has a withdrawal or lashes out so compassion is the key. Answer questions as openly or honestly, listen to the child, provide a lot of nurturing as the child is full of anxieties. “Did I do something wrong, do mommy and daddy still love me?”, and then sometimes the children will come in with small babies, have drug withdrawal, where her mother was on every drug you can imagine. And there is constant screaming, their small bodies wracked with pain, some as young as three, four five years of age, mostly small babies.” As parents we have to take turns. My wife and I have to work as a partnership; if the parents have to have 100% commitment.
What recommendations do you have to foster parents who are thinking about fostering?
Dr. Manning: True love is needed. The return investment is limited and there needs to be a reciprocal relationship. These are 13 years old going on three sometimes in terms of their needs for nurturing. So, it is important to ask: “Why are you coming into this?” What unmet needs are you fulfilling?”
Dr. DeGarmo: Do as much research as possible. You will need to have investigative attitude, have your eyes open, and honestly discuss the issues with all your children. It is a 24 hour job and a life changer and it takes a full commitment.
How has your professional training helped you with foster parenting/foster care issues?
Dr. DeGarmo: I had two real careers. Currently, I work in the school system, go around the country doing foster parent training as I like to speak to foster parents. I have gone through the experience, listen to those concerns, and have the knowledge and experience. So I really appreciate doing that. I find that I truly enjoy training the foster parent. One of my current seminars is called grief and loss in foster parents and I was grief stricken when I had a foster child removed from my care. I tell them, “It is normal and they need to know we devote our lives to them. We give them our support and stability and when a child is placed in another home it is very, very hard and society tells you it is not normal. I say this is normal and you need to recognize it is grief and give yourself time. Use journaling, diary, eating well and taking care of your own health. Sometimes, a foster parent will try to substitute with another child, but no two children are the same.
Dr. Manning: My education helps me make recommendations that carry weight and are likely to be followed. I travel to foster homes and talk to the families, I show them how to handle behaviors and engage foster parents in collaborative co-parenting. My professional day job is at Orange County as a case manager. I go to foster homes, work as a social worker but do not provide any direct therapeutic services. Children have a critical need for continuity and I emphasize how families can meet those needs. We need to see case managers not as agents of change; conversely, the same can be applied to the youth. “Here’s what we do for you and to you.”
Dr DeGarmo, as a foster parent who is also an educator, how has it been working with biological parents?
Biological parents are often angry with themselves but place the blame on foster parents. They will blame my wife and I due to the fact that we are taking care of their children. Our hope is that biological parents will recover and reunification will occur. So there are some angry parents who are very upset. My wife is the only Australian in town so it has been hard. Some biological parents have threatened us, yes threatened.
What made you interested in talking and/or writing about foster care?
Dr Manning: I believe that parachute parenting in my office for 45 minutes is inadequate. Therapists empower caregivers to heal their child. We need to empower foster parents to be healers and caring professionals. Therapists are trained in individual therapy, but what about the other 167 hours? What are you doing about the other hours? This led me to become a trainer, case manager and coordinator in foster care. Parents need to be collaborators rather than babysitters.
Dr DeGarmo: When I was doing my research on my dissertation, there were very few books out there. I tried to research all the questions I had and there were no adequate answers to my questions. This prompted me to write my own book based on our family’s experiences. My first book, One Foster Parent’s Journey: Fostering LOVE, is my experiences as a foster parent, my own challenges, my own faith, the struggles my wife and I have had, the experiences of children in care, how my own children got affected, they can pass that book along to friends and family and say “this is what I do and go through”. It is an educational book into families that have members that foster. The Foster Parenting Manual touches a little bit on behavioral issues, but more on how to work with schools, case workers, technological dangers, and what do you do when your child leaves your home. I want to say thank you to foster parents out there. There are days when you do not want to do it anymore, it is the hardest job I do, I go to work to rest. There are emotional, physical challenges and want to say thank you. A different Home: A new foster child experience. The Illustrations are very beautiful. It is based on my 6 year old who was adopted. “A brown child coming into a yellow person’s house, the problems she is having and the foster parents try to help, “This home is not my home it is a different home but it is okay.” I am finishing a book on technological dangers- these children want to be loved and they jump on the social media.
Dr. DeGarmo, what would you wish you had known before you became a foster parent?
Dr. DeGarmo: I don’t believe the training prepared me for the emotional difficulties. I was not prepared when the first child came to my home, or when our first child left my home. I would have talked to fellow foster parents and asked what was it really like? I would have spoken to them and asked them what is their view? I believe that by listening to their views I would have had a unique perspective that you don’t get that in training sessions. You get what to do when a child misbehaves. It was very basic just barely scratched the surface. Foster parents need two or three days of intensive training with a short narrative from that foster parent about working with case workers, different insights.
Dr. Manning, how should case managers change in the way they work with foster kids?
Case managers need to focus on the critical needs for continuity. Their ability lies in seeing a problem before it happens. Once a placement is displaced, bags are packed already. If we want, the child will know before anyone else does. Children know implicitly or explicitly that this is not working. I’ve been on this dance floor before.”
What would you say were your greatest failures?
Dr. DeGarmo: At one point in our foster care experience we took in a child born in Romania, adopted at 9 in Pennsylvania. The adoptive family abused her physically and sexually and unadopted her, second family adopted her and after being beaten and unadopted, the third family adopted her in Georgia. After six years of abuse she was dragged into the system in Georgia at 17. She was strikingly beautiful and in tremendous need. She had many barriers emotionally. We wanted to adopt her in our home and we wanted to offer her our family but adoption was a bad word for her. She had to be placed in a group home, she was tearing our family apart; - our values, our beliefs, and for many years I felt terrible guilt that I had led her down. Fortunately today she is graduating college and for the longest time I had the biggest guilt.
We had another child who was seven and a half years old. Three days before Christmas we got a call she was going to live with aunt and uncle. The next day, she went and four years later she called us one night and she said “daddy” she wanted to come back to us. We were out of town. She had been abused by aunt and uncle, and placed in foster care in another state. We came back from Australia three weeks later and till today I spend thirty minutes per week to find her. She will be 15 years old right now. She is important, she is valued, and she is loved, and she was placed in foster care in another state. There needs to be a nationwide database for children moved from home to home, state to state, she moved from Florida and Alabama and have had no luck.
Dr. Manning, what are your views on allowing parents to “unadopt”?
Divorce and remarry is as close an analogy as I can get. They have been promised this is life-long. When the going gets tough, they walk away.
So what suggestions do you have for post-adoption services?
We need to do a far better job of post adoptive services. As a parent myself, I had a really tough time when they were very small. The sleepless nights were killing me – the meals disappear right when they are needed the most. Who is in the adoptive pool? If the child is going to fill a void in their lives it is doomed to fail. These kids cannot fill a void. If a person feels I’m not whole until I have a kid, then our kids already have a void they can’t be viewed as filling that void. It sounds good about saving their life, their depending on the kid to meet their needs. They see the child as a puzzle piece to finish their life.
Dr. DeGarmo, what would you say were you greatest successes as a foster/adoptive parent?
Three children I had adopted. Seeing a child for the first time smile, say I love you for the first time. We have a small farm, a swimming pool, they go outside and learn how to play, the three we have right now have never had these experiences – Just the first smile.
Thank you both for being such incredibly effective professionals at what you do! Our foster care/Adoptive community is grateful for your invaluable service.
Dr. Kalyani Gopal
www.midapsychologicalcounseling.com
www.thesupportivefosterparent.com
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski